New Zealand waltzed to a five-wicket win over Sri Lanka in their second and final Twenty20 cricket international in Auckland yesterday to level the series 1-1.
Veteran Nathan Astle was in blistering form with an unbeaten 40 off 37 balls, hitting the winning run with nine balls remaining.
Sri Lanka never fired after being sent into bat first, falling 10 balls short of their allotted 20 overs as their innings came to a halt at 115.
PHOTO: AFP
It then became a formality for New Zealand to reach the 116 required for victory, a target they achieved for the loss of five wickets.
Brendon McCullum and Stephen Fleming started the run chase at a rollicking pace, reaching 51 by the sixth over when Fleming drove at Dilharo Fernando and was caught by Chamara Kapugedera at point for 17.
Kapugedera ran out McCullum for 28 to put the brakes on the New Zealand scoring until Astle opened up, taking 15 off the penultimate over by Ruchiro Perero to level the scores.
In the next over, Astle sneaked a single of the third ball by Tillakaratne Dilshan to wrap up proceedings.
The tone of the game was set with the very first ball of the game when television technology detected Upul Tharanga edge James Franklin to wicketkeeper Peter McGlashan.
It was such a faint edge that the players did not even appeal, not that it mattered much as Franklin bowled Tharanga two balls later.
By the 10th over, Sri Lanka were in deep trouble at 58 for six and if it was not for a tail-end bash by Lasith Malinga and Fernando their innings may well have ended much earlier.
Malinga's 27 came from 19 balls and Fernando hit 21 from 14, whacking 44 in four overs for the ninth wicket before Fernando mishit an Astle full toss and was caught by Andre Adams on the deep mid-wicket boundary.
Franklin was the most successful of the New Zealand bowlers with three for 23.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier